Friday, May 10, 2013

Prelude to a postponed afternoon of rain

"It is rather observable that darkness comes before midnight." He said as he rubs his head with a fresh white towel to dry his wet scruffy hair.

"And by that you mean?" She asked, book in hand, a Kerouac. She doesn't like the Beatniks, but on some occasions like when another lover left her quietly for the night leaving a little note that says thank you or that she was wonderful, she reads a Kerouac. She likes the way her tongue rolls in her mouth as she says his name. Maybe it's to forget or not to make a memory most probably. And it's a problem because she easily remembers things and she doesn't like these little memories, things that will make her remember her little careless decisions like sleeping with men because they happen to read Anaïs Nin or that they happen to pretend they love jazz and offer her a good tasting whiskey, and she knows they're pretending, but you don't ruin jazz and a good whiskey just because you caught a fool on act, she doesn't like many things, in fact.

"People need not fear the dark of midnight, there's the dark of before midnight and the dark of after midnight too."

"So you are saying we need not fear the midnight"

"Night." He cuts her of mid sentence with a gesture of hand. You can see the acrylic paint stains on the joints of his slender fingers. It was a good thing because he couldn't paint anything for almost a year and his curator is demanding new works to put up until he met her on a crowded music festival. The next day, every stretched canvas he had there waiting to rot had her face and her eyes. Her eyes that he claims to love more than every part of her body. And she doesn't really believe that. He loved the lips of his previous woman, and he loved the shoulders of the one before that and the neck of the one before. He's just another painter who found a new muse after all.

"Right, night..." She squints her eyes, demanding an answer.

"Well midnight, before midnight and after midnight."

"Right, night. So you are saying we need not fear the night but the darkness itself." She said, reaching out for a cigarette and running her hands violently under the waves of white cotton sheets until she found her antique Zippo lighter right in the middle of the wet patch.

"Exactly!"

"But darkness is something you should not fear. I love the darkness myself."

"You don't love the darkness." He parts her legs as if parting water and rests his knees just between her translucent thighs, he crouches his back just enough to put his face right in front of hers.

She exhales right at his face, high cheekbones, long lashes, creating a wall of smoke to separate them. But still, out of the blur, she tries to take a good look at him, tries to look for something asymmetric, something ugly, something not worth remembering. And as the smoke went away, his face came clear, his eyes trespassing hers. He takes the book from her hand, puts it away on the crowded side table and puts out her cigarette next. She didn't even resist. And it's quite unusual because she loves her cigarettes more than she ever loved a man. But it is also quite usual because you just can't know exactly what goes inside her head.

He lifts his finger and gives her nose a tap, something he would always do when she's quite the entertainment.

"You, my lady, use darkness to protect yourself from the darkness."

He leans to kiss her and she took him like honey in her mouth, her tongue cold against the warmth of his.